Court of International Trade

The Container Store on Dec. 10 filed suit at the Court of International Trade in an attempt to get CBP to follow a 2011 court ruling that classified parts for its elfa hanging modular storage system as furniture. According to the complaint, CBP headquarters instructed port officials to hold off on reliquidation of entries covered under the court ruling. The agency also refused to concede defeat in other lawsuits covering the same product, because it apparently still believes the elfa top tracks and hanging standards should be classified as metal mountings despite CIT’s decision, the complaint said.

The Court of International Trade on Dec. 6 refused to dismiss a challenge to high antidumping duty rates imposed on merchandise from a Chinese exporter of steel nails. In the 2010-11 administrative review of steel nails from China, the Commerce Department had assigned Suntec Industries the 118.04% “China-wide” rate, because the company didn’t file paperwork to show it was independent from state control. But Suntec argued it never got the chance because the petitioners that requested the review never served the company with notice. As a result, Suntec said it didn’t learn of the review until days before it was completed in March 2013.

The Court of International Trade denied an importer’s challenge to CBP’s tariff classification of its valve motors for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. Belimo Automation said a microchip added to the electric motors that allows for some independent action means the product is classifiable as a regulating and controlling instrument. But the court affirmed CBP’s finding that the product is still an electric motor because it doesn’t measure the variable it’s regulating.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Dec. 6 affirmed a lower court ruling that found parts Samsung used in its plasma screen televisions rendered the merchandise ineligible for NAFTA duty-free treatment. The Court of International Trade had in November 2012 found the plasma display panel modules, included in plasma TVs Samsung imported from Mexico, to be “flat panel screen assemblies” (see 12112332). Flat panel screen assemblies can’t become NAFTA-eligible through any tariff shift rule. Because the plasma display panel modules were made in South Korea, CIT’s decision rendered them ineligible for NAFTA duty-free treatment. CAFC said it adopted the reasoning of CIT “in all respects,” and affirmed.

The Court of International Trade on Dec. 4 remanded the final results of the 2009-10 antidumping duty administrative review on circular welded non-alloy steel pipe from South Korea (A-580-809) for the Commerce Department to reconsider the way it priced inputs used by respondent SeAH in steel production.

The Court of International Trade ordered the Commerce Department to rethink the 308.33% antidumping duty rate assigned to Blue Field in the 2010-11 administrative review of preserved mushrooms from China (A-570-851). Blue Field said the unusually high AD duty rate, which was calculated from data and not assigned as punishment, was skewed by the agency’s valuation of its rice straw and cow manure inputs. The high “surrogate values,” used because Commerce doesn’t trust Chinese input prices, drove up the agency’s estimate of Blue Field’s domestic prices, which resulted in the company’s U.S. prices looking extremely cheap (and dumped) by comparison. Blue Field pointed out that the Colombian rice straw prices used by Commerce were higher than Colombian prices for actual rice, and that the Colombian fertilizer prices used by Commerce were not specific to cow manure, and approached the price of hamburger meat. The court agreed that something was fishy with Commerce’s numbers, and remanded for agency reconsideration.

The standard under which the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reviews some antidumping and countervailing duty cases from the Court of International Trade may be causing a lack of uniformity in appeals court decisions and a lack of predictability for litigants, said five judges from CAFC and CIT during a panel discussion Nov. 21. CAFC Chief Judge Randall Rader and Judges Jimmie Reyna and Evan Wallach, as well as CIT Chief Judge Donald Pogue and Judge Timothy Stanceu participated in the discussion, hosted by the Federal Circuit Bar Association and the Customs and International Trade Bar Association. Hot on the heels of a dissent where Rader, Reyna and Wallach questioned CAFC's practice of taking a fresh look at many CIT cases instead of deferring more to the lower court's expertise, all five judges discussed whether the review standard is due for a change.

The Court of International Trade will hold a training workshop on new features and procedures in the Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) system on Dec. 11 from 2:30-4:30 p.m. in New York, N.Y. Two hours of Continuing Legal Education (CLE) credit will be provided. The workshop is not mandatory, but CIT encouraged attorneys who practice before CIT and their support staff to register. The format of the workshop will allow for practical application of skills and for development of skills with new features of the system, CIT said. To attend, complete a request (here) and email it to cmecf_training@cit.uscourts.gov, or fax it to (212) 264-3242 to the attention of Glenn Johnston.

In an August decision only made public on Nov. 14, the Court of International Trade remanded aspects of the Commerce Department’s 2008-09 antidumping duty administrative review on steel nails from China (A-570-909). The court’s Aug. 30 opinion took issue with Commerce’s treatment of entries that importers had said were exported by Certified Products International (CPI), even though that Taiwanese company was found to have no exports during the period. CIT found inconsistencies between Commerce practice in market economy reviews, where the importers would have paid the all others rate in that situation, and non-market economy reviews such as this one, where the importers were allowed to pay CPI’s rate.

Antidumping duty cash deposit rates will fall for three exporters of wooden bedroom furniture from China (A-570-890), after the Court of International Trade sustained on Nov. 14 a Commerce Department redo of a 2009 administrative review. Commerce had originally set AD duty rates at 41.75% for mandatory respondent Dalian Huafeng, as well as non-individually reviewed separate rate companies Nanhai Baiyi and Dongguan Liaobushangdun.¹ But after two CIT remands (see 12092102 and 13062702), Commerce lowered the AD rates for all three companies to 11.79%.